Flax Scutching

Over the past weekend Stahlstown, Pennsylvania held its annual Flax Scutching. The Scutching has been going on for over 100 years. In the past farmers grew flax and used its strong fibers to make thread. The thread was woven into linen material for clothing. The flax threads were also combined with wool fibers to create linsey-woolsey cloth. Bothe the linen and linsey-woolsey were sewn into clothing.

The Scutching was an assembly of farmers who gathered to soak the flax plant, beat apart the fibers, comb them out, then twist the fibers into thread on a spinning wheel. Later, the threads were placed on a loom and woven into cloth. Not all the farmers could afford the machinery and equipment to “scotch” the flax, so that was why the assembled in a community effort.

The annual Scutching was larger this year. There was a goodly number more vendors selling their wares. Several tented booths were selling craft items, ground wheat flour, cornmeal, and buckwheat flour. Several food areas selling sandwiches, buckwheat cakes and pancakes, soups, ice cream, and funnel cakes. Some vendors were selling maple syrup or honey.

In the main pavilion there was an area where “actors” demonstrated the acts of beating the flax to separate the thread, combing, spinning and weaving the tread into linen cloth. In the rest of the pavilion were areas set aside for historical displays of local photographs, authors selling their books, and our Chestnut Ridge Historical Society table. Our display this year was photographs of schools, the classes and the actual buildings. I did my duty and worked my three hour shift after eating a hamburger and a chocolate ice cream cone.

I can’t sit for that long and often got up to talk with the authors and people moving through the displays. An author who had 5 different books was in his 90’s sharing his history in the Navy and afterward as a sunken ship locater. One of the divers under him also dove to recover the U.S.S, Hunley, a civil war submarine.

Another author was selling his several books of the paranormal along the different roadways in Pennsylvania. A final author had books of the local Native Americans and areas they lived with maps. He also had a display of arrowheads, pottery, and a hand carved war club with the huge ball on the end. It was made especially to bash the heads of the enemy.

Because I was unable to leave the Society’s booth unattended, I couldn’t watch the reenactment of the Native American raid and burning of the settler’s cabin, but the loud retorts of rifles reverberated in the warm evening air.